Verizon

I had a very interesting day so far. A crying child had me up at 3:30 AM and I didn't get back to sleep. I figured I would take the opportunity to get ahead on my work. So iPhone, a bowl of cereal and coffee in hand I plopped myself in front of the financial news stations to see what the results of the weekend bail out of Freddie and Fannie would be.

Shortly after the cereal was done and a few sips into my delicious Elite Coffee, the internet went out.

Hosted communications provider Acredo Technologies recently hired Mike Ross to bolster the company's sales. Acredo is headed up by Mike Ross a veteran of the communications space having worked for Dialogic, Rhetorex, Aculab and many others.

Mike's son Brian worked with dad at Aculab for many years and while there did a great job selling DSP resource boards to a number of OEM customers making the communications equipment sold to business and service provider customers.

While I must admit this isn't the biggest news -- it does signal the continued growth of the hosted market (at least from this vendor's perspective) and it also brings two of the nicest people in telecom back to the same company where they will likely be successful again.

If you want to connect with Mike Ross, be sure to come to ITEXPO the week after next to hear him speak. Here are some details.

Whenever I go to a conference, I learn a tremendous amount from the people I meet at the show. I really enjoy the impromptu networking which takes place at events as it allows me to learn so much about what is happening in the market. Ironically, I generally learn things I didn't think I would learn ahead of time. Quite often, I wish I would have known more about peoples' experiences before I met with them as it would allow me to be better prepared to ask pertinent questions.

I further wish I knew who was coming to events and and moreover I wish I could get a "brain dump" from them before the event so I could have a frame of reference before our conversations take place.

Imagine how much better networking at a show would be if I had an idea what people were generally thinking about the market before I even say hello.

In less than two weeks the world with gather at ITEXPO -- The World's Communications Conference to help select products for purchase, learn about the latest events in the telecom market and network with peers.

It is this last area where this blog entry should be of maximal benefit.

ADC Telecommunications CEO Bob Switz appeared on CNBC this afternoon explaining his company's guidance for the full year is to be maintained. It would appear he was referring to revenue and not earnings. He also explained six weeks ago guidance was lowered. He further mentioned at the end of the second quarter, guidance was raised.

I missed John Chambers on CNBC this morning. I wanted to hear what he had to say but unfortunately I was being interviewed about ITEXPO at the exact same time Chambers was on TV. Thankfully, Michael Dinan, a TMCnet editor was on hand to listen to Chambers and write up what he had to say.

Chambers seems relatively bullish on technology and anticipates growth between 12-17% for the long-term. In addition, the world's largest networking company announced a net of over 10 billion dollars for the fourth quarter.

One of the most fascinating advances in political systems worldwide is the advent of technology like blogs and other web 2.0 initiatives such as social networking and video. But even the old technologies like SMS are coming into play as candidates look for any and every advantage to distance themselves from one another.

As you can imagine, with so much technology swirling around, making candidates more productive and efficient, we at TMC became mezmerized by it all. It got so interesting to us in fact we decided to categorize all of the stories we ran having to do with election technology. Afer a while we realized we had developed an entire website focusing exclusively on election technology and how it transforms poltics.

The financial news networks seem to thrive on giving us the negative news regarding the economy. Jobs being lost; wages decreasing and all sorts of other negative bits and pieces.

Well there is something you won't hear about if you focus all your time and attention on the network news. It seems in fact that there is some great economic news in the world of IP communications. In fact, VoIP jobs are rising in salary at a time when so many other jobs are not.

OnForce Inc., is an online jobs mart where employers and workers meet on the Internet and agree on an hourly rate and a recent report from the company shows growth in VoIP rates have increased from 1.5 to 1.95 between Q1 and Q2.

I made a logical leap in my headline -- inferring you can get famous -- in this case, written up in Popular Science Magazine if you come to TMC's Los Angeles ITEXPO conference in just over two weeks. Let me explain.

About a year and a half ago, Ari Zoldan, CEO of Launch 3 Communications -- a company installing global WiMAX networks came to ITEXPO and won an Toyota FJ Cruiser at the show. Now he seems to be popping up everywhere.

I just read an article in Popular Science Magazine (a great pub BTW) where Zoldan in his new capacity as CEO of Quantum Networks, LLC explains to inventors the best way to go about getting VC money from a firm like his. A few points to consider are -- call the CEO directly and don't give up majority interest.

I have mixed emotions about the Comcastcap of 250 GB/month of bandwidth. On the one hand, it is good the company is telling users what is acceptable and what is not. At least we now have a number and not an arbitrary amount the service provider gods don't share with us. Furthermore, it is good the company will communicate with customers about how much bandwidth is being used if users do actually go over.

Although I am not happy that ISPs limit bandwidth use that is the consumer in me talking.